The Power of One is the title of both a book and a movie. It tells the story of a young boy growing up with many challenges and how he overcomes them. The phrase “the power of one” has, however, become a truism for the ability of one individual to make a difference and even change the world.
We will conclude the book of Leviticus (Vayikra) this week with a double portion, Behar and Bechukotai. In the last chapter (27:1-8), we read the laws of evaluations. If a person pledges to donate his value or the value of another person to the Temple treasury, how much must he give? The Torah tells us that it does not depend on the individual’s physical, intellectual or financial worth, but that there is a rule of thumb based on age and gender as if they would apply it on the labor market.
A person may have a stock portfolio of billions, but his inherent “worth” is not measured by accumulated wealth, no matter how impressive that may be. He or she may have a brilliant mind with an IQ of 180, but the Torah’s evaluations are great equalizers where all people of a certain age bracket and gender are valued at the same amount.
Just this week, my physiotherapist told me he went on a tour of Japan and visited a museum dedicated to Chiune Sugihara, the legendary Japanese diplomat stationed in Lithuania at the beginning of World War II. Jews were desperately trying to escape from Europe, but no country was willing to accept Jewish immigrants.
Sugihara was the consul general in Kovno, now Kaunas, and requested permission from his superiors in Tokyo to issue transit visas for Jewish immigrants begging for help. Tokyo repeatedly refused the request. Sugihara agonized, wrestling between his professional responsibilities and his conscience. In the end, he decided to defy his superiors by issuing 2,000-plus visas, many for families. He saved the lives of more than 6,000 Jews who were thus able to leave Europe and find refuge temporarily in Japan, en route to safety and security elsewhere.
My late father, Reb Shimon Goldman, was one of those fortunate recipients.
He was a teenager studying in the Lubavitch Yeshivah in Vilna, and the directors managed to acquire visas for the students. Subsequently, they and several other yeshivahs, notably the Mir, were able to spend much of the war years in Shanghai, China, until they were able to relocate afterward.
My father was the sole survivor of his entire family from Poland. When he passed away in Brooklyn, N.Y, at the age of 91, he had left more than 100 blood descendants, including 80 great-grandchildren. Thank God, today there are many more. No one knows for sure, but Sugihara’s 2,139 transit visas, which cost him his position in the diplomatic corps, his livelihood, saved the lives of perhaps hundreds of thousands of Jews. So many who are alive today, myself included, would not have been here were it not for the heroism and altruism of an unknown Japanese diplomat in Lithuania. Oskar Schindler saved 1,200 Jews and got a Hollywood movie. I’m waiting for the Sugihara movie. He deserves it.
In May 2019, I spoke at the historic Congregation B’nai Abraham in Philadelphia, where I appeared on a platform with Sugihara’s only living son, Nobuki, who lives in Antwerp, Belgium. The son of the savior met the son of a survivor for the first time. Indeed, it was one of the most emotional moments of my life. When we first met, we embraced and felt a powerful connection. The media were there in force. I told them how his father saved my father’s life, and I would not be alive without him.
At the event, we each spoke and answered questions. My talk focused on “the power of one.” Here was a single individual who, following his conscience, rescued thousands from death and was personally responsible for generations of Jewish families alive and flourishing all across the world.
I also spoke of how one man, my father, was able to rebuild his fallen family virtually single-handedly. I remember how every time a new great-grandchild was born, he would clutch that baby to his chest. He never said a word, but we all knew what he was thinking. He was deeply moved and eternally grateful to have been able to rebuild his family. Although the Nazis wiped out his whole family, in the end, Adolf Hitler did not win. Of the 2,139 transit visas signed by Sugihara, my father was No. 2029.
My brother and sister, and other family members from New York came to Philadelphia for the event. When we took a family photo with the Sugiharas, you could feel the reality of the Talmudic statement, Kol hamekayem nefesh achat … “He who saves even a single soul is as if he has saved an entire world.” Just looking at the generations that have emanated from one single survivor, we saw that idea so tangibly before our very eyes.
We all use the phrase “eternally grateful” on many occasions. We probably use it in circumstances that don’t necessarily merit eternal gratitude. But for Sugihara’s acts of heroic righteousness, tens and tens of thousands of our people are indeed “eternally grateful,” literally!
My mentor—Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe—taught that every Jew is a survivor. Even one born today, long after the war, because it was Hitler’s plan that not one Jew should be left alive. During the Holocaust, plans for a Museum of the Extinct Jewish Race were being prepared in Prague. But we are here. As such, we have a sacred and moral obligation to rebuild the Jewish world. Physically, by raising Jewish families; spiritually, by ensuring our children and grandchildren are proud and practicing Jews; and collectively, by reaching out to those who may feel estranged or disengaged from their Judaism for whatever reason.
The Torah teaches us how to value people. Every individual is an entire world. May Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese tzaddik, righteous man, inspire us all to do just that.